


Let's Hang Out Sometime

by meanstoflourish



Category: Lucifer (TV)
Genre: Episode: s05e08 Spoiler Alert (Lucifer TV), Gen, Michael catches Chloe trying to escape and they have a slightly more violent conversation, Whump
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-05
Updated: 2020-10-05
Packaged: 2021-03-08 01:27:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,822
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26843614
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/meanstoflourish/pseuds/meanstoflourish
Summary: “Everyone’s always been afraid of you, haven't they Michael?" Chloe asks, pushing through the agonizing pain in her wrists. "If Lucifer reflects people’s desires back at them, then you must reflect their fears, don’t you?” Each word is like a bullet hitting center mass.“I bet you’re still a virg—”His hand closes around her throat before she can finish the word.
Relationships: Chloe Decker & Michael, Chloe Decker/Lucifer Morningstar
Comments: 31
Kudos: 268





	Let's Hang Out Sometime

Chloe hits Michael and runs.

She resists the urge to press him to the ground and cuff him, ingrained in her after so many years in the force. She simply runs as fast as she can. He’s not a perp, and she’s not a detective right now. She’s only human. Next to Michael, she’s little more than an insect. 

Fear keeps her legs pumping as she runs through the strange cave system Michael brought her to. It looks like a zoo of sorts, reminds her vaguely of when Trixie was 5 and she and Dan took her to Colorado during Winter, so she could play in the snow for the first time and have a proper white christmas. The Denver Zoo had been deserted and slightly depressing when they visited, much like her surroundings now. 

The desire to see her daughter again burns. 

“Oh _Chloe!_ ” Michael sing-songs, and every hair on her body stands on end. “You’re just making this harder for yourself.”

She pauses for just a second, her lungs burning, chest hurting. It feels like her heart is about to give out. She looks around, trying to orient herself. Everything looks the same. She might have been running in circles for all she knows. 

She looks to her right, and notices an “Exit” sign that definitely wasn’t there before.

Freedom, so _close_ she can _taste_ it. 

She braces herself for one last sprint—

“Found you!” 

Everything goes black. 

  
  
  
  


Chloe groans.

Her head feels heavy, and she’s not sure why. At first, Chloe thinks she’s in Bobby’s trailer after she ate too many of his pot brownies between takes, but then she realizes she’s not 17 anymore and hasn’t been in a movie set in years.

She’s 37, she’s a detective. She...fell in love with the devil and got kidnapped by his not so angelic twin brother. 

The pot brownie theory seems more plausible, as does the thought that she just imagined the last 20 years of her life, but then the numbness in her skull turns into a splitting headache. She recognizes the sharp sting of a cracked skull. She has enough sense to worry about possible brain damage after blunt force trauma. It’s the second time this has happened to her, but apparently getting knocked out cold never gets better. 

She slowly opens her eyes, and realizes she’s sitting on the floor—back in the cave. Michael paces in front of her, peering at her from his height. 

“I didn’t want to hit you in the head, I know how fragile you humans are," Michael tells her. "But you left me no choice.” 

The warfare in her head weakens into little embers of pain burning brightly across her skull.

The pain wanes just enough for her to focus. Chloe takes stock off herself. Her head is killing her, but she can see clearly now, at least. She quickly realizes that her hands are trapped together with metal cuffs, probably her own pair. He’s restraining her now, when he didn’t before. 

It gives her a small sense of satisfaction, that she proved herself to be more than what he thought she was. 

Her legs feel fine. She lifts her head, locating the cave exit. It’s to her left—if he gets distracted, she can make a run for it. But she wasn’t able to get to the exit before, when she was working at almost her hundred percent. She won’t be able to now, not with her hands cuffed and a head injury. But if he leaves again...maybe she should pretend she’s still passed out, and hope he’s stupid enough to leave the door open. 

“I’ve been perfectly nice, haven’t I? I even got you a coffee!” 

Chloe sighs. She’s being illogical. She’s trapped here, and she’s hurt and restrained. If she attempts to escape again and it ends like it did the first time around, she’s not sure she’s coming out of it unscathed. Michael was right in one instance: human brains are fragile. 

“This isn’t personal, Chloe,” Michael says.

She closes her eyes. She’s thankful Lucifer and Michael's accents are so different, because she would hate it for him to ruin the way Lucifer says her name. The reverence he uses...she can remember two times he's used her name

“But I do need you here,” he says, and then he’s kneeling right in front of her. She moves away from him on instinct, his presence pressing down on her like storm clouds.

Her reaction seems to bother him, and she files away the information like the cop she is. She's not the final girl in a slasher film or the kidnapped princess in a bedtime story that she deemed not good enough for Trixie. She's a detective, and a damn good one. 

“I can’t risk you trying to run away again, you understand,” Michael says, and then pulls her to her feet. Chloe stumbles as she struggles with the world tilting sideways. Just how hard did he hit her? 

“Come on,” he says gently, before wrenching her arms up by the cuffs around her wrists. She hisses, and the sounds reverberates against the back of her head. Little black spots filling her vision at the pain when he doesn't stop pulling her upwards. Her feet leave the floor as he lifts. Chloe is terrified.

She’s seen the raw power Lucifer has, has seen him do things like holding back an entire car with his bare hands in a way that would have ripped a normal man in half. She'd been shocked at the time, scared. It had been clearly inhuman. That sense of _otherness_ that permeated Lucifer back then and she no longer sees, is in full show in Michael right now. And she understands more keenly where that primordial fear she'd felt with Lucifer came from. Humans weren't supposed to experience this. She's suspended in the air for a few moments, and then he lets go of the chain. Her arms are wrenched up, fists pressed together as she hangs from the ceiling. The tips of her toes barely scratch the floor, not much help at taking pressure off her arms. Had he hung her up on a hook like a dead cow?

“It can’t be that bad, hanging out with me?” Michael steps back. “Get it? Hanging out?”

Chloe struggles with breathing in the stress position she finds herself in, and her rising fear isn't helping. Michael seems unhinged, at least more than usual for someone who had tried to take over his twin’s life. She was scared before, when she first woke up here, she was, but he hadn’t really hurt her. He'd used chloroform and she'd woken up no worse for wear. Maybe it’s stupid and human of her, but deep down she’d thought…”hey, they’re still family, right?” Michael won’t kill Lucifer, Michael won’t kill her. At the end of the day, they're related, right?

Stupid, stupid of her. 

Her head hurts, and a warm trickle of blood slides from her head down her neck. He could have killed her. There’s no line he won’t cross. 

She's terrified now, and she hates that he’ll be able to smell it on her. 

“Come on Chloe, don’t leave me hanging!”

Maybe making shitty puns runs in the family.

“Lucifer is much better at that than you,” she snarls, not without effort.

He smiles. Chloe doesn't think she’s ever seen a better definition of slimy.

“Lucifer isn’t here now, is he?”

 _Suspension by the wrists causes permanent nerve damage after fifteen minutes._ The data pops up in her brain like a flashcard from her days in the academy. She feels like she’s been hanging here for hours already, but it can’t have been any longer than a minute. It _hurts_. She can feel the skin off her wrists burning, and it won't be long until it breaks. Her arms are killing her, the pain climbing with every breath. She’s suddenly thankful she lost so much weight in the months Lucifer was gone. She could've dislocated her shoulders or wrists. She still might. 

Even if he doesn’t clock her in the head again, just having her in this position is going to hurt her in the log run. He could kill her. He could leave her hanging here for days, and she’d meet the same end. Or he could wait a few hours and leave her permanently disabled.

Chloe feels her heart beat behind her eyes. 

“You’re afraid,” Michael says. “You’re afraid _of me_.”

There’s no point in denying it.

“I am,” she accepts. _Because I know you’re a psychopath_ , she doesn’t say. She doesn’t think antagonizing him is the way to go—yet. But if he won’t listen to her enough for her to fake some empathy, she’ll jump to the next point on the de-escalation list. Motives. What does he want out of this?

Kidnappings are rarely about chance, the victim usually knows the captors. Fathers unhappy with custody agreements, sleazy guys obsessed with a co-worker. An angel who hates his twin and yet tries to take over his life instead of destroying it?

“But everyone’s always afraid of you, aren't they Michael?" she asks, pushing through the agonizing pain in her wrists "If Lucifer reflects people’s desires back at them, then you must reflect their fears, don’t you?”

He seems taken aback that she’s even speaking to him, but he doesn’t take long to recover. 

“How can you presume to know anything—”

“Is it only humans?” she continues. “I bet...back in the Silver City, I bet that everyone wanted to be around Lucifer. He’s magnetic that way. He’s _charming_ .” Longing cuts through her chest like lightning. _Lucifer, where are you_? She grits her teeth. “But what about you?” she goads Michael. She's touching a sore spot, she can tell. “Did you have to chase after your siblings like a pathetic little—”

“You won’t speak to me that way!” He yells, spittle hitting her cheek. “Lucifer defied our father. He is a _disgrace_.”

Chloe breaths in deeply, taking the fact that she’s still alive and he didn’t snap her neck in half as a good sign. 

“But that was your idea, wasn’t it?” Chloe asks Michael. “It was you who pushed him to do it, because you didn’t have the courage to do it yourself.”

Lucifer had looked so lost when he’d told her what Michael had said.  
  
It had been sometime between rounds 2 and 3 of the mind-blowing sex that she, admittedly, always thought they’d have. She’d been lying on top of his chest, and heard the catch in his breath.

 _“Dad, Michael. Have any of my decisions really been mine?"_ he'd mused, his long fingers running over her naked back in haphazard patterns. " _Or have I always been just a pawn in my Father’s plans, or in my brother’s machinations?”_

It had been the same way she’d felt, when she found out about her origins. She’d been too hurt back then to see it, had shrugged it off as his brother being mean to him, but right then she'd seen they had more in common than she’d thought. 

The pulsating pain in her wrists brings her back to the present. 

“How…”

“How do I know? He’s my boyfriend, Michael. We talk.” For a moment, self-preservation is trumped by anger at the man—at the angel— in front of her. In this moment, she wants to hurt him more than she wants to help herself. And maybe it's stupid, but calling Lucifer her boyfriend gives her a thrill and a measure of fortitude. She's not nothing, she's not just any human. She holds the devil's affections in her grasp. And she trusts him with her life, he's coming for her, she knows that. They're partners. It's them against the world, fuck Michael. “But you wouldn’t know anything about that, would you? Has anyone ever been in love with you? Has anyone even _liked_ you?”

Each word is like a bullet hitting center mass, she can see it. And then, la piece de resistance. 

“I bet you’re still a vir—”

His hand closes around her throat before she can finish the word. 

“I’m not my brothers,” Michael hisses. “Amenadiel and Lucifer have defiled their natures by laying with your kind. It’s disgusting, an aberration, a mockery of—”

“And yet you were going to do just that when you pretended to be him,” Chloe tells him, with what little breath she has left. Her faint voice rings out in the empty cave. She hasn’t forgotten that he was going to let her have sex with him while he pretended to be Lucifer. She hasn’t even begun to unpack how violated she feels about that, hasn’t talked about it with anyone, least of all Lucifer. She can’t just ignore it. Right now, she doesn’t want to. She knows her finger is sinking into the wound. She’s found his weak spot. 

Michael's fingers leave her neck.

“You _wanted_ me,” she hisses. “Because you want everything Lucifer has, and you know you’ll never have it. Is that what you fear Michael? That you’ll never be as good Lucifer?”

He might not be the devil, but she swears she sees his eye flame red. 

He lifts his hand, furious, and Chloe braces herself for the blow— 

But it never comes.

She opens her eyes and Lucifer is there, holding his brother back. He grabs him by the throat the next moment and then they’re scuffling, moving almost too fast for her eyes to follow. Maze bursts through the door then, Dan hot on her heels.

Chloe’s barely had time to process the fact that Dan is working with Maze now, that he’s here with Lucifer after trying to kill him not two days ago, because then he’s hugging her thighs and lifting her, and then the pressure is off her wrists.

Chloe sighs, relief coursing through her body like a shot of morphine.

“Stay still Decker," Maze says, “wouldn’t wanna cut those fingers off.”

There’s the noise of metal groaning and then she’s free, sliding down Dan’s body towards the floor.

“Are you okay?” he asks desperately, and she nods and hugs him. Maze managed to break the chain connecting the handcuffs somehow, and it hurts to spread her arms, blood circulating again. Over Dan’s shoulder, she can see Lucifer has Michael pinned against the cave bars.

Lucifer’s suit is ruined, and though she can’t see his face, the hand holding Michael down is bleeding from the knuckles. 

“Come on!” Michael goads him. “Are you gonna kill me, Samael? You had no problem offing our little brother, so am I next? Come on, Sammy boy!”

Lucifer’s hands tremble.

Chloe holds her breath. God, she wants Michael dead, but she doesn’t want Lucifer to do it. She knows what killing Pierce did to him, she can’t imagine what killing his brother, his _twin,_ will do. 

“Lucifer…” she says, and he looks back at her, meeting her eyes. She sees the relief in his. “I’m okay. I’ll be okay.”

Lucifer nods, and then turns towards his brother. 

He presses Michael further against the bars, and she swears she hears the crack of bone. A broken nose, maybe. Michael tries to fight him, but his uncoordinated efforts get him nowhere. Lucifer is...he’s unstoppable. Chloe sees the King of Hell right now, Lord Morningstar, as his demon had called him when he possessed that man weeks ago. He's all righteous anger, an avenging angel at her command.

“If you touch the Detective again, I will cut off your hands and feed them to you,” he threatens. 

And then he lets him go. 

Michael is gone in a blur of feathers and dust clouds, and then Lucifer is there, taking her in his arms. 

She kisses him with everything she is.

Her wrists sting as she drags her hands down the lapels of his waistcoat. 

"You're bleeding, Detective," his voice rings with alarm as he pulls away. "Your head—"

“I’m okay,” she tells Lucifer, burrowing in his embrace. 

She closes her eyes, and lets herself soak in the comfort his arms offer her. _I'm safe_ , she tells herself, willing her body to accept the fact. She's shaking. 

Lucifer kisses the side of head gently, a whisper of a touch in deference to her head injury, and Chloe's heart jumps in a way that has nothing to do with her fight or flight response or shock settling in. 

Screw Michael, and screw her fears. Lucifer cares about her. He _loves_ her, even if he hasn't said it yet. Nobody has held her like this, like she's not an afterthought—like she's cherished. Lucifer sighs, and Chloe hugs him tighter, uncaring about the stinging pain in her arms. The devil holds her back, like she's something precious to him, like she's...everything.

And in that moment in time, Chloe believes it. 

**Author's Note:**

> Day 1 of Whumptober, and my first Lucifer fanfic. I'd love to hear your thoughts on it. Thanks for reading!


End file.
